found among those to whom Christ shall say "I know you not;" for the fairest of them all has more of evil in it than you know; but if they follow you, they occupy their rightful place, and you will thus necessarily follow Him who gave the works all their life, their continuance and beauty, and you all your title to that rest that remains for the people of God.

What a beautiful and blessed thing is the gospel of Jesus! Precious is the Bible-more precious still the gospel it contains; precious are our Sabbaths-more precious still the everlasting Sabbath. Love the gospel; live under the influence of the gos. pel; spread the gospel; if needs be, die rather than part with the gospel. It teaches us purely to live-it teaches us peacefully to die. An aged Christian's death has no terror in it—very little cloud on it; it is that beautiful evening twilight, that mingles so imperceptibly with the twilight of the eternal morn, that the night between is scarcely felt. "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."

How thankful should we be that we have been delivered from the superstition and bondage of the Church of Rome! Her best and most exemplary members, according to her theology, must. enter at their death into a state of purgatorial torture, purifying according to its intensity of agony and its length of duration. Their best and holiest dead must enter into this middle state; it is this prospect that lies inevitably before them. Hence no Romanist dies triumphant-no halo surrounds his head, no song of victory escapes from his lips. The blazing fires, not the glories - of heaven, burn before his eyes; and instead of resting from labour at the hour of death, he feels that the keenest portion of his sufferings is yet to come. It is not so with the true Christian, whose faith and hopes are drawn, not from the traditions of men, but from the inspired oracles of God. He regards the death-struggle as the last of his labours, and his exit from the body as his instant entrance into peace. Whether he is cut down in the midst of his days, or dies daily in long and lingering decay-whether he slips the coil of life at once, or sees and feels it gradually unwind, he cherishes the sure and imperishable hope of an abundant entrance into joy. He sees on the last margin

of time, the interlacing margin of eternity; hears, borne from afar, the sounds of his welcome, and tastes in the cup of death the sweets of immortality and life.

Let us cleave to that blessed book which contains the gospel, and serves as a lamp to our path through the valley of the shadow of death. By its instrumentality, children now understand what the greatest ancient philosophers had no conception of. That blessed book rekindles in the heart extinguished love, and relights and trims the lamp of immortality-it guides the judgment-inspires the affections-restores the Sabbath of the soul-it overarches the dreariest caverns of despair with the bow of promise, and rings benedictions in the tombs of the dead. It alone opens to us an avenue from earth to heaven, and plants in its darkest and dreariest nook the radiant and imperishable inscription"Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."

41

LECTURE III.

THE NEW JERUSALEM.

...

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper-stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth four-square, and the length is as large as the breadth and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper and the city was of pure gold like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was of pure gold, as it were transparent glass."-Revelation xxi. 1-3, 10-21.

:

THE scenes first recorded in this chapter plainly follow the advent of Christ, and as plainly precede the long expected

Millennium.

First of all, as it seems to me, the earth will be purified by the last fire, as it is written in 2 Pet. iii. 10: "The day of the Lord"—that is, the day in which is fulfilled the promise of his

coming" will come as a thief in the night;" or as it is elsewhere written, "Behold, I come as a thief." What, then, takes place on this day, "in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up?" The same startling event is also described in verse 12: "Wherein the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat."

When this overflowing fire shall have wrapped the world, and consumed all that is in it, and, having done its mission, has passed away, Christ and his risen saints shall descend from their aërial glory upon the purified earth, called in verse 13, "the new heavens and the new earth;" and this descended company is here described as "the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." This glorious spectacle is just the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah lxv. 17: "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying." The Apocalyptic description in this twenty-first chapter is also the fulfilment of a kindred promise made by the mouth of Ezekiel, (chap. xxxvii. 24 :) "And David my servant (i. c. beloved servant) shall be king over them, and they shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judg ments, and observe my statutes, and do them. . . . I will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle, also, shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

This New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, is just the sealed ones out of every kindred, and tribe, and tongue; that is, the one hundred and forty-four thousand- those who had "washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb"-the sackcloth-wearing witnesses, once all but extirpated from the earth-" a woman," once concealed in the wildernessnow coming down in their resurrection and holy bodies, like a cloud of glory, to reign on that earth on which they suffered so much and so long.

This scene is the realization of a vision thirsted for during eighteen centuries, Rom. viii. 19: "the manifestation of the sons of God," "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body;" and also of John xvii. 21: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me;" and also of Gal. iv. 26: "Jerusalem, which is above, is free, and is the mother of us all." The old Jerusalem is thus forgotten in the richer glories of the new, and the first paradise lost in the lasting splendours of the second, and the "vision of peace" is no longer prophecy, but performance and blessed fact; all this erection of glory, magnificence, and beauty, shall rest and shine on that very earth which Satan has usurped, and sin has harassed, and clouds and darkness have hung over for so many thousand years of pilgrimage and evil. God's ancient city, the dim type, was called by expressive names: "the city of the great King;" "city of God;" "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth." These expectations, it is plain, exceed the scene actualized, even in Solomon's reign, in which they had no adequate counterpart; they were rays shot from the future; they had their rest on the then present, but their light from the future. Ancient Jerusalem wrecked the divine idea of a city, just as Adam wrecked God's great idea of a man; but God's purpose is frustrated in neither-it moves over their respective ruins to its perfection, and they both find that perfection-the one in Christ, and the other in the New Jerusalem.

In this chapter of the Apocalypse, therefore, we have dim ancient predictions fully realized, prelibations and foretastes of distant blessedness fully met, shadowy outlines filled up, and the deep yearnings of humanity, and the fervent prayers of saints, responded to in music, in beauty, and in glory. It is at this period that (Heb. xii. 22) "ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant."

This city reveals its origin in our presenting its definition. It